Vintage Lionel Prewar Tinplate Items

We found these old tinplate items from a local consignment shop in Damascus, Maryland. They look really wonderful! I'm not really sure if I can use them as collector's items or play with these items. However, MTH normally offers tinplate trains as reissues of original Lionel prewar items. MTH offers them for both O gauge and standard gauge. If I were getting an O gauge tinplate engine from MTH, then I can run it with a couple cabooses we found, although it may be pretty expensive. We also found a couple accessories: a flagman and a water tower. The flagman used to work well, but it would be fun operate it again if I can use my Lionel transformer. It may be pretty dangerous to test this item because some short circuits may occur. Presently, I'm using all of the items as collector's items. I realized that toy trains are not only found in hobby shops but also in some consignment shops. Perhaps a lot of toy trains in consignment shops are possibly items that are as old as these tinplate items, but some are small scale items such as HO and N scales. Again, these items are really wonderful, as if I would compare them to my postwar engine that I got for my 17th birthday.